*Game Development Issues*

[-tkf-]

But they don't, they put less resources on my version. What can't be right is the fact that they place all the developers on staff to "squeeze" the PS3 tight and dry while they leave the cleaning lady with the 360 version and see what happens.

That is very shortsighted. While the PS3 may need more resources on a pure technical level it´s peanuts compared to the money lost if there wasn´t a PS3 version. And if they make a PS3 version they have to make sure it can compare to the 360 version or they risk selling less. And theirby losing way more money that the extra attention may have cost them.

Without a good PS3 version your cleaning lady may be out of a job.

 

[DrJay24]

That's what I don't find fair for multiplatform programmers like you who are working more than anyone without that much benefit in the end, except if you find happiness in making others happy, which is nice.

They are selling those PS3 versions, which means they make more money. They are not doing charity, it's a business. Do you think a few extra programmers working on say the PS3 version of Madden is for fun? No, they sell another 500k copies, the extra cost is in the noise.

 

[Cyan]

I'm sure many more PS3 users have asked why they're paying full price for an inferior 360 port than the other way around. The PS3 version of multi-platform games, are for the most part, compromised because of the 360. A 360 DL DVD has about 7GB of capacity and the PS3 version is usually the same size so the quality or amount of the art assets has already been compromised. If the game uses streaming, then the size of the world as well as the quality of the textures has severely been compromised. Additionally, some developers don't even bother to improve the quality of the sound and just transfer over what they mastered for the 360 version.

I'm against parity, but why the assets and the quality of the textures are compromised? As far as I know developers must fill the 512 MB of RAM in both machines according to their capabilities, regardless the quality of the textures and assets. That's not taking into account each machine strenghts and weaknesses. For instance, let's say you want to use tessellation on the 360 and port that code to the PS3.

Tessellator is a function that given n-vertex in input, give you m-vertex in output (this is the general definition, you can do a lot of things, you can take a look at ATI documents for more), you must create code on the SPU for the PS3 to work, not an easy task as Cell is as fast as complex.

Deferred rendering is a big no-no on the 360, although Alone in the Dark seems to use some kind of DR which works, but it's probably not as pure as KZ2 DR. I don't know...

As for the sound, PS3 games should have better dynamic range sound quality in some games, because you don't need to compress it, but 7 GB is more than enough for games like Guitar Hero o Rock Band, for instance.

The real question is... how important is the PS3 hardware isolated? And what exactly does it entail? We can speculate all we want but in the end we will probably will not know for a long time.

In the end this is all part of the normal evolution of hardware (Sony's strenght) and software... this is Microsoft's strength.

There're not secrets about this, no one breaks NDA, those are all public informations, Sony have to fix the software issue and untap the power of the console, the question is WHEN? I suggest that the answer is 'between this falls and Q1 2010'
that's all.

Sit and wait, friends.

 

[Cyan]

That is very shortsighted. While the PS3 may need more resources on a pure technical level it´s peanuts compared to the money lost if there wasn´t a PS3 version. And if they make a PS3 version they have to make sure it can compare to the 360 version or they risk selling less. And theirby losing way more money that the extra attention may have cost them.

Without a good PS3 version your cleaning lady may be out of a job.

Well, it was an exaggeration. I'm sorry if that sounded discrimatory. A cleaner (lady or man) is a human being like you and me. Not that I'm an engineer or some big shot, far from it in fact.

Intelligence is something that wins me over, which doesn't have nothing to do with the level of studies you reached in this unjust world.

They are selling those PS3 versions, which means they make more money. They are not doing charity, it's a business. Do you think a few extra programmers working on say the PS3 version of Madden is for fun? No, they sell another 500k copies, the extra cost is in the noise.

Depends on what you mean by extra. If extra means working overtime and thus having no life, and putting a, let's say, 95% of the programmers on the PS3 version while leaving 2 developers working on the 360, it probably doesn't worth the hassle and the money at all. For a game like Madden, it doesn't matter, it's going to sell yes or yes, but for small developers it'd be a nightmare.

 

[nAo]

Depends on what you mean by extra. If extra means working overtime and thus having no life, and putting a, let's say, 95% of the programmers on the PS3 version while leaving 2 developers working on the 360, it probably doesn't worth the hassle and the money at all. For a game like Madden, it doesn't matter, it's going to sell yes or yes, but for small developers it'd be a nightmare.

Don't worry, the gaming industry (retarted) standard is actually the opposite, everyone on 360 and and a very small team on PS3.

 

[-tkf-]

Depends on what you mean by extra. If extra means working overtime and thus having no life, and putting a, let's say, 95% of the programmers on the PS3 version while leaving 2 developers working on the 360, it probably doesn't worth the hassle and the money at all. For a game like Madden, it doesn't matter, it's going to sell yes or yes, but for small developers it'd be a nightmare.

For a small developer it´s even more important, they can´t rely on massive PR like the big games do. They have to make sure they look good in the reviews and an inferior port will always earn minus point, especially from me.

 

[Cyan]

Don't worry, the gaming industry (retarted) standard is actually the opposite, everyone on 360 and and a very small team on PS3.

I remember, for your arguments here, that you were claiming that's the case, :smile: but I thought it wasn't that common after reading some previews of games such as FC2. Today it's the other way round, at least in that case, the example I know of.

 

[Jedi2016]

The split is getting narrower. I don't know any examples off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure that more and more games are using PS3 as the lead platform, then porting to X360. I seem to remember reading that it was easier to port that way... porting a 360 game to PS3 is a pain, but it's a lot easier to go the other way, from PS3 to 360.

The problem as I see it is that it's all about money and not about quality. I predicted, before the PS3 even launched, that this gen would see a very large disparity between multi-platform games and exclusive games, because of the hardware differences between the two consoles. That if a game is coded for just one set of hardware, it will be able to push that hardware much further than a game coded for the lowest common denominator. GT5 pops to mind as an example. But the developers and publishers are all about the bottom line.. make it multi-platform and make more money, and they don't care about the sacrifices made to the game's quality.

I don't think we've really seen what either of these consoles is really capable of. And if everybody continues making everything cross-platform, I'm not sure we ever will.

 

[Quarke]

I'm against parity, but why the assets and the quality of the textures are compromised? As far as I know developers must fill the 512 MB of RAM in both machines according to their capabilities, regardless the quality of the textures and assets. That's not taking into account each machine strenghts and weaknesses. For instance, let's say you want to use tessellation on the 360 and port that code to the PS3.

Tessellator is a function that given n-vertex in input, give you m-vertex in output (this is the general definition, you can do a lot of things, you can take a look at ATI documents for more), you must create code on the SPU for the PS3 to work, not an easy task as Cell is as fast as complex.

Deferred rendering is a big no-no on the 360, although Alone in the Dark seems to use some kind of DR which works, but it's probably not as pure as KZ2 DR. I don't know...

As for the sound, PS3 games should have better dynamic range sound quality in some games, because you don't need to compress it, but 7 GB is more than enough for games like Guitar Hero o Rock Band, for instance.

The real question is... how important is the PS3 hardware isolated? And what exactly does it entail? We can speculate all we want but in the end we will probably will not know for a long time.

In the end this is all part of the normal evolution of hardware (Sony's strenght) and software... this is Microsoft's strength.

There're not secrets about this, no one breaks NDA, those are all public informations, Sony have to fix the software issue and untap the power of the console, the question is WHEN? I suggest that the answer is 'between this falls and Q1 2010'
that's all.

Sit and wait, friends.

As nAo and many others have already pointed out, the 360 is the lead platform for over 90% of the multi-platform games so I'm not quite sure where you get the idea that the 360's graphical prowess is being suppressed just to make both console versions look identical. The lead platform always has the most developers and usually the best developers. The idea that they would compromise their effort and, more importantly, their vision just because the PS3 might possibly have difficultly replicating the effect, scene, etc achieved on the 360 is highly suspect.

The explanation as to why we have parity right now is simple - developers are more familiar with the PS3. The PS3 tool chain and development frameworks have matured and some are on par and even better (the argument can be made) than those on the 360.

As for art assets being compromised - I was referring to the amount and detail of those assets that are limited by the storage limitations of the 360. A large multi-platform game will undeniably have compromises made to it to fit within the 7GB limitation of a 360 DL DVD and those assets are usually carried over to the PS3 without much change (other than to refactor it in a way that's beneficial to the RSX). Sanbox multi-platform games are even more guilty of this because their game is essentially designed around 7GB instead of a potential 50GB BD. I would have liked to have seen what Rockstar could have done with 50GB at their disposal. Also, when I mentioned that sound is compromised on the PS3, for multi-platform games, I really don't think the space left over after executable code, assets is really sufficient for a large scale production that emphasize sound quality as much as they do visuals.

Also, I'm sure the pro's and con's of both the RSX and Xenos have been discussed in detail here and both camps will counter with a response if you say one if better than the other. For me, the real unknown is the Cell and whether it's able to be tapped to it's theoretical potential.

 

[liolio]

I don't know if Cyan has a position in the business but as you're new to the board you may have miss some comments for other devs (Nao is a dev too).
I think mainly of Joker454's comments (who worked on multi platform games before moving to pS3 only) and maybe Mintmaster (not sure here so as I won't want to put words in his mouth feel free to correct/ignore ).
If I had to make a synthesis of the different opinions lately without being myself a insider I would go with something like this:
The trend lately has been that dev teams that had been pushing sub-part PS3 titles hurted their reputation.
They tried to make more efforts on the ps3 rendition. See some Joker's comment the industry is in need for devs willing to develop on the ps3 hence his own professional choice.
Quiet some studios had been touting that they will make the ps3 their lead platform.
Nao (who worked on HS with great results if I'm right) recently worked on a game developed by a Californian editor to optimize the PS3 version, not sure I'm right on the title but if I'm the game may have been touted at some point (important detail) to use the PS3 as the lead platform.
From some of his comments lately it looks like that it doesn't go according to the plan.
In fact from my "outsider" windows it looks like Joker and Nao comments are part of the same reality.
Pushing a not that performant ps3 rendition is ill perceived by quiet some potential costumers, they also realize that on some aspect making the Cell working properly will also the xenon perform better (while not a great CPU, used as a standard general purpose CPU you end as MS pointed out at gamefest mostly CPU limited... you may end like this anyway but not my point).
Hence we heard about a lot of studios pretending changing their ways to do stuffs.
But from some Joker's comments it seems that the 360 offer a much better development environment and that keeping with promise is not that easy.
You may develop on CPU side with cell in mind and port latter to xenon, but on the gpu... Well as joker pointed out most tend to use the 360 and tools working along for shader etc.
Once you started this... with time to market pressure/etc. it's tough to keep with promise and not go back to the 360 as primary platform.
That's it I may overly simplify but overall look like it to me.

If we want to go further on cost well, as it have been claim the most important part of a game budget is content creation, while DVD has it's limitation I'm don't think that most games are that's hurt by this.
Filing 25GB come at a cost and they are already pretty high.
Ok it happens with some titles and basically it end hurting the CPU.
In pgr3 a full core was devoted to decompression, between you will always need to compress you're data but how aggressively is the important point.
So ta some extend PS3 could be hurt, on sound, some time texture diversity (not quality).
On the other the great lever in perfs in the RAM available and the 360 seems to have an edge here not because of the OS respective size but by design UMA vs NUMA.
As Joker pointed out some time some RAM on the 360 just go unused.
Overall it's all business / time to market/ human resources available.
As some pointed out nobody got really screwed as the main post in budget is content creation.
Multi-platform are not here to provide the most to everybody.

If somebody is to blame I would say it's Sony, some editors were about to shift and use the PS3 as the lead platform but the overall development environment has made the promise difficult to keep or at least that's the way I understand the divergent talks coming from people inside the business on this board.

 

[joker454]

For me, the real unknown is the Cell and whether it's able to be tapped to it's theoretical potential.

This generation has about two more years left of interest, after which they will both look horribly dated and interest and/or development will start to shift to the new machines. Point being, the results and expectations of this gen have already been largely decided, there will not be any new miracles forthcoming.

The real unknown at this point is not Cell, but when PS3 builds will finally achieve parity with their 360 counterparts. Game like Pure show that it's getting close, but other games like Fracture show that even though we are three years into this generation, the PS3 versions still visually lag behind. Closing this visual gap will remain the priority, with more time and money thrown at PS3 builds to help them achieve parity with their 360 counterparts. That task alone will probably eat up the remaining time leading up to next-next gen, chasing theoretical potentials will remain a pipe dream.

At this point, just enjoy what you have and don't except miracles, you'll only be setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

I think there's still room for the PS3's God of War -- a title exceeding what the console was assumed to be capable of. If they got deferred shading to work on a PS2, perhaps there are other types of graphics techniques that CELL will lend itself to.

 

[liolio]

I think there's still room for the PS3's God of War -- a title exceeding what the console was assumed to be capable of. If they got deferred shading to work on a PS2, perhaps there are other types of graphics techniques that CELL will lend itself to.

There are a lot of things possible with the cell.
there is enought power to run accurate really collisions, impressive particles effect.
From comment on this board deffered rendering is the way to go on the ps3.
Deferred shading... well I laking knowledge I've still to learn what it is.
Nao hinted quiet some time that the cell could act as a great tesselator it could be used to generate height map extra geometry and others things that I don't know. Sadly as Laa-Yosh pointed out it seems that the tools in regard to the content creation are still missing.
I hope that the awaking of directX11 and maturing of directx10 will push the development of tools allowing manageable use of this potential

 

[Fafalada]

Today it's the other way round, at least in that case, the example I know of.

Things like that don't turn themselves around in a short time. If you hear the idea at some point, look for at least a year down the road before it starts becoming common. So while some studios started to shift, it'll be a long time(if ever) before majority uses PS3 as lead like they do 360 now.

 

[Quarke]

This generation has about two more years left of interest, after which they will both look horribly dated and interest and/or development will start to shift to the new machines. Point being, the results and expectations of this gen have already been largely decided, there will not be any new miracles forthcoming.

The real unknown at this point is not Cell, but when PS3 builds will finally achieve parity with their 360 counterparts. Game like Pure show that it's getting close, but other games like Fracture show that even though we are three years into this generation, the PS3 versions still visually lag behind. Closing this visual gap will remain the priority, with more time and money thrown at PS3 builds to help them achieve parity with their 360 counterparts. That task alone will probably eat up the remaining time leading up to next-next gen, chasing theoretical potentials will remain a pipe dream.

At this point, just enjoy what you have and don't except miracles, you'll only be setting yourself up for disappointment.

I gave up hope that multi-platform developers will push the Cell long ago. The best we can ever hope for is parity and, for the most part, we have that today, albeit with some limited exceptions. As long as they have EDGE and continued support from Sony they may even make small incremental improvements.

I'm expecting to see real differentiation with the 1st and 2nd party developers who can basically do whatever they want to take advantage of the hardware - with exceptions, of course. The problem with MP development is that you're always developing with thoughts of LCD in the back of your mind and constantly compromising your code, art. sound, etc. It's an environment that stifles innovation. Games like Heavy Rain and Killzone 2 clearly showcasing what the PS3 is really capable of if they live up to their preview potential then the bar will have been raised this generation by the PS3 and not the 360. And who knows, perhaps that may make a few people think twice about the unexploited capabilities of this machine.

 

[T.B.]

Deferred rendering is a big no-no on the 360.

How so? I've seen that being stated a couple of times around here and it always stuck me as an odd statement. 360 works well as a deferred system. There is some additional costs from resovling from EDRAM, but it's ok.

As for the sound, PS3 games should have better dynamic range sound quality in some games, because you don't need to compress it, but 7 GB is more than enough for games like Guitar Hero o Rock Band, for instance.

I don't think anyone will use uncompressed sounds. A nice advantage of Bluray is that you can ship a truckload of localizations. Everything else depends greatly on your RAM budget.

Don't worry, the gaming industry (retarted) standard is actually the opposite, everyone on 360 and and a very small team on PS3.

This. Seriously. I don't (personally) know a team that works the other way round and from what I hear from people-who-will-know, it's like that everywhere. Well except from Criterion.

 

[JPT]

This. Seriously. I don't (personally) know a team that works the other way round and from what I hear from people-who-will-know, it's like that everywhere. Well except from Criterion.

Just to clarify, since I am prone to misunderstand, you are saying the same thing as nAo that, most have the bulk of resources on X360 and then few on PS3?

 

[T.B.]

Yup.

 

[eastmen]

I don't get the problem though. Even if in the end the ps3 can create better games through either graphics or physics or i guess A.I does it matter ? 360 just keeps getting better games that look better and have more advanced physics and A.I . That means the ps3 will continue to get pushed also. The xbox had the capability to have better games than the ps2 however it was rarely taken advantage of outside of first part exclusives. I think this is just part of the market. By the time the ps3 starts to over take the xbox 360 we will see the next gen consoles and the xbox 720 or whatever will trounce over both the 360 and ps3 and the same with the ps4 , it will trounce the 360 and ps3. If they are coming in 2010/2011 the time frame for the ps3 is getting smaller and smaller. IF the 360 is still easier to program for and you can get 90-95% of the same end result out of it I don't think we will see the ps3 take the lead platform support away from the 360. Esp for western devs. The gap between the xbox 360 and ps3 is the same or bigger than it was at launch of the ps3 in the USA . In europe the ps3 is gaining. Does it make sense for a developer to make the lead platform the smaller installed base ? IF your making a Gears of war or COD4 I don't think that the japanese installed base matters to you as it would mabye account for 50 thousand or so copies. In europe and the usa combined the 360 has a sizable lead that doesn't look like its going to diminish in the next year.

 

[T.B.]

Does it make sense for a developer to make the lead platform the smaller installed base ?

Install base does not matter at all. If you're going to ship for multiple platforms, you're going to have to deliver on all platforms. The relative number of units sold does not really matter for the development process. You could question if people should make games for the PS3 at all, as it has a smaller install base, but that would be missing the point. Old economics trick question: If you have two investment options, A and B, and A returns more money than B, which option do you take?